Leyther_Matt

Leigh by 8

Remember about 6 weeks ago when Wigan couldn’t buy a win?! If Farrimond, Marsden and Eckersley develop in to half of the player it looks at the minute then they’re winning everything for the next few years (Until Farrimond signs for Leigh and the whole dynasty falls apart)

Absolute filth.

Huddersfield are dreadful

Got to admire the dedication of two mates. Just been stood with one of them at Castleford and he was picking up the other one at Cleckheaton on the way home as he’d been at Bradford v York. They’re on the 5am flight from Manchester to Paris. Fair play to them. I’ll be going for the sitting on the couch all day option of NRL / cricket / Huddersfield v Toulouse / Wakefield v Hull KR / Catalans v Wigan

Sky subscription. Which has actually been quite helpful for attending in person, too, when it comes to Sky VIP competitions! I also still subscribe to Premier Sports in the hope of Emma Jones and, erm, Ross’ Ratings returning to my screen on Monday nights.

Great result in the end. Cas looked really good in patches but looked like they were reliant on Adrenalin so were never going to keep it up all night. Leigh, meanwhile, have an uncanny ability to go from 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye and grind out a result in arm wrestles like tonight. Congratulations due to Castleford on both their ‘worst pie in the world’ title and also ‘angriest woman in the world’. I had the temerity to point out that the group of Leigh pensioners she was shouting were a bunch of “dirty *see you next Tuesday’s*” might not have actually played in the game. Turns out my mate makes a great beer shield Fanzone is a big improvement, feels much more spacious than the previous alleyway and the musician gave a good stint of generic indie numbers. Lamenting the loss of ABK from the bars though and as above the in-house food is bloomin’ awful.

7,742 at Castleford v Leigh

I think there’s a collective failure amongst the entire RL press not to press too many buttons - especially with club owners - because they know it would affect their cushy number on the gravy train. Davidson does seem a little bit more keen to ask the questions but gets as many answers as the rest of them. I actually thought watching the first half that the East Terrace looked to have far more space than usual but did seem a bit better second half, so not sure if a sneaky few still change ends at half time as I’ve done once or twice?! Last night’s first half was probably the clearest example in years of moving the band away from the microphones, too

Tbf there was a 10 page thread on WanderersWays leading up to the play off final titled attendnoncery And despite the empty seats, travel issues and early kick off, not a single person said they’d have preferred to be at Old Trafford, the Etihad or Hill Dickinson rather than Wembley

They any good at rail works?

Much cheaper than the £25-£75 for the Challenge Cup Final, mind

It’s a genuinely dreadful journey from the north west to Newcastle, both by road and rail Worth noting that the Women’s FA Cup final only got 43,000 on today at Wembley with Channel 4 advertising for weeks, an undoubtedly larger marketing spend and no talk of moving to a smaller venue

London is mint to visit for a few days btw, one of the best cities in the world without a doubt, and when the trains behave less than 2 hours from much of the heartlands

Thought it looked perfectly fine on TV tbh and the atmosphere came across really well Watched the game at my local cricket club and nobody mentioned the empty seats, they just watched the game. Similarly, anyone mentioning the Bolton game to me from last week just mentioned how good the crowd and atmosphere came across on telly, and that was with a smaller crowd than last year! There will be fewer fans for both teams and neutrals because of Magic/Catalans/Toulouse/Vegas/Paris plus the travel issues so in the context it was a very decent crowd Would like the RFL to take a bit more control on that front though and make sure they’re talking to Network Rail to get stuff in the calendar as early as possible and making more of a centralised effort on coach travel, hotel bookings and the like instead of leaving people to fend for themselves with only a couple of weeks notice